COMMUNITY, ENVIRONMENT, AND VIOLENT CRIME

Using regression analysis of community areas of Chicago, patterns of homicide, robbery, and aggravated assault are analyzed for the mid-1970s. It is found that neighborhoods in which very poor and middle-class people live in close proximity are those in which rates of all three types of criminal violence are highest. Of all demographic and crime variables analyzed, proximity was by far the most strongly related to crime rates. This relationship was taken to be another indicator of the extreme burden placed on blacks in heavily segregated cities of the urban North.     

A JURY OF PEERS

The frequent inquiries received at our Chicago offices about juvenile juries prompted us to allot some space to it here. To date the National Council has taken no position on their use. A study done in 1965 by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency of eighteen teen-age juries showed many of the claims made on behalf of the teen-age jury—for example, that it gives a teen-ager “a fair trial by a jury of his peers”—are dubious. “The juvenile jury lacks legal foundation and signifies a de facto surrender of judicial authority and responsibility. No substantial evidence was found to support the assertion that the teen-age jury reduces juvenile delinquency and youth crime. The procedure perpetuates the archaic and unsound practice of jury sentencing long abandoned, even for criminal cases, in all but a few states.”     

A Recent Visit to Central Africa

Mr. Wood, the Conservative Member of Parliament who led a parliamentarydelegation which recently visited Central Africa, gave the followingimpressions of visit at a joint meeting of the Royal AfricanSociety and the Royal Empire Society, on November 7, 1957. Mr.James Callaghan, M.P., a Labour Party member of the delegationpresided.     

PREDICTION AND INFERENCE IN CRIMINOLOGY

The calculus of probability constitutes an elegant formal model for the various questions of prediction in criminology. However, the use of this model has been criticized for its failure to deal with individual instances vis-à-vis group phenomena. It has been argued that since probability is a function of classes or sequence of events, no meaning can be attached to the probability of a single event. This paper presents a logical analysis of this aspect of probability and prediction. The proposal of logical probability is suggested as a meaningful explication of the prediction and the probability of a single event.